Digital Lifestyle

The path from Kickstarter to customers is seldom smooth, and life-logging camera company Narrative (née Memoto) knows that better than most, announcing another hardware issue today that will delay shipping for early backers. According to a message sent to early supporters on the crowdfunding site, issues with camera quality, PCBs, and some of the casing colors means that the production rate has been lower than expected given the initial aim to begin shipping from November 1st.

Life-logging is getting to be big business, and camera company Looxcie is aiming to blend wearable recording with GoPro-style action camera technology, for the Looxcie 3. Capable both of streaming video (in 480p) to a companion iOS and Android app, streaming directly to Facebook, and recording footage locally (in 720p), the Looxcie 3 packs WiFi for wireless connections and comes with an optional waterproof case that can be used up to 60m under the waves.

Livescribe has been making smartpens able to turn your handwritten notes and drawings into digital content for a while. Last year we reviewed the Livescribe Sky WiFi smartpen and found it to be an interesting little gadget. Livescribe is back today with a new smartpen called the Livescribe 3 smartpen.

Lifelogging camera and Kickstarter success Memoto has rebranded to Narrative, with its freshly-named Narrative Clip wearable set to begin shipping from November 1st. The startup was forced to change its name after being notified it "conflicts with a similar name in the market", opting for Narrative instead as the camera silently records life stories. Meanwhile, any disappointment at the last-minute switch is likely eased with news of a $3m funding round led by True Ventures, which previously backed MakerBot and Fitbit.

The Moto X is too expensive. It's underpowered. It's ugly. Consumers don't want color options. They don't want to talk to their phone, just on it. If it's not metal, it's not premium. Man, the Moto X is a disappointment. Some of the instant - and vocal - criticisms of Motorola's new phone have bordered on the vitriolic, the backlash perhaps again proving that pre-reveal hype can be a double-edged sword. Nonetheless, there's a sense that in immediately dismissing the Moto X on how it measures up to today's phones, we're missing out on recognizing how it could be showing us the shape of the phones of tomorrow.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with technology. Any product I could get my hands on, I would use. And when I had a chance to pick up a game console, you can bet I was rushing to the stores to get one. Technology ruled much of my childhood.

Still, I was able to handle the real world. I could converse with both kids and adults, and I was engaged enough in school to know that there was a time and place for my technology. I also understood that getting too obsessed with tech could make me socially awkward, which prompted me to question how much time I should be spending around it.

I'm in a perpetual argument with more than one person over the appropriate length of a resume. I've always believed in the 1-page resume. Most on the other side see 3-pages as a logical limit. They are wrong, of course. The 1-page resume is the perfect size. You never need more than one page explaining who you are. If you think you do, you are overthinking yourself. The resume is not supposed to be a novel about your life, it's supposed to be a book report about the novel about your life. It gets the reader interested in the story, but it doesn't tell you everything or give away the ending.

My son sits in the back of the car a lot. There's the ride to and from school, the field trips on weekends, that sort of thing. I have an internal struggle on what he should be doing back there. Part of me wishes onto him the excruciating boredom I suffered through in my youth in the back of cars. I tell myself that his character will be built upon managing such boredom and not indulging his every whim with digital stimulus. In other words, I worry his iPad is rotting his brain (disclosure, during the day I work for Samsung, we make competitor tablets that I also worry may be rotting his brain). Still, I can't take away his tablets. I can't do that to my child. I understand.

My son gets into the car and before I have a chance to slide into the driver's seat and buckle myself in, he's already reaching for the iPad. He's fastened his seatbelt, obviously, because he knows he can't touch the iPad until he's buckled up. He starts with his current favorite game, Mr. Crab. The music is horrible. The gameplay is fun, especially for a 4 year old.

His gaming elicits those terrific moments of parenting that you can tell your friends who don't have kids and they still find funny. Like when he started trash-talking his games. This happened recently. He always talked to the characters, I think that's normal. Once he figured out Talking Tom the Cat Who Farts will talk back to him in a funny voice, the babbling from the backseat never ended.

With the news surrounding Sony’s possible plans to launch a smartwatch in the near future, I’ve been inundated with comments by the geekiest of the geeks, saying how they can’t wait to get their hands on any and all smartwatches. Those devices, they say, will dramatically improve their lives.

As one of the geekiest geeks out there, one would think that I, too, would want to get my hands on a smartwatch. After all, I’m a gadget fanatic and love everything there is to love about this industry. Why wouldn’t I want to slap a smartwatch from Sony or Apple or any other company on my wrist and be done with it?